


When You Tell My Story, Don't Forget Me

by kwritten



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Historical, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Mother-Son Relationship, Pre-Canon, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-17 10:38:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/550655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events in 1864, Anna begins wandering West - ending up in San Francisco at the turn of the century with a human child she must learn how to care for. When she suddenly finds her child is now a fully grown man, Anna must face his desire for her, and vampirism, while also battling a growing awareness that she knows nothing about her own turning, or Pearl's life before they became a "family." After all - what happens when a vampire tries to raise a human child - when she no longer remembers a human life at all...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Meeting Like This, After So Many Years

_ _

_A Prologue:  
_ _Meeting Like this, After so Many Years_

 

 

 

_To Mother_  
Your pale fingers smoothed stray hair from my temples  
And I, like a child, instinctively  
Clutched the hem of your dress.  
Oh Mother  
For fear of losing your fading shadow  
I dare not open my eyes  
Although dawn has cut my dreams to shreds.

 I cherish that red scarf, afraid  
To subject it to any washing  
Lest it diminish your lingering fragrance.  
Oh Mother  
The flow of time is coldly indifferent.  
For fear that memories too will fade  
I dare not open their manifold screen. 

For a small thorn in my finger I came crying to you.  
Now with a thorn crown on my head  
I dare not moan.  
Oh Mother  
Too often in anguish I gaze at your photo.  
Even if my cries could pierce the earth  
How could I disturb your calm sleep?

 I dare not display my gift of love  
Though I’ve offered numerous songs  
To flowers, the seas, and the dawn.  
Oh Mother!  
My deep, sweet memories of you  
Are not waterfalls, or floods  
But an ancient well silent  
Beneath the shade of flowers and shrubs.

Shu Ting

 

  
_Hidden in the midst of chaos there sometimes can be found a solitary figure of extreme calm. A figure for whom bloodcurdling screams hold no emotion, for whom death and terror are incapable of holding meaning. These eyes have seen too much, these ears have beheld too much. A figure that is able to pass through wars, rebellions, protests, unseen and unnoticed, for its apathy. A figure for whom the chaos is not just a helpful disguise, but a state of being. The chaos, it can beckon and lure the darkest and the brightest, folding within its embrace those lost among us who were bred and born into destruction and violence; or those for whom silence is too stifling, too constricting. Those who find normalcy, or what passes for it at any given age, too painful to bear. The chaos can be all that is known._

_There are those who move freely through darkness and death, slipping to and fro completely at ease with the shadows we cast, but try to ignore. These figures breed the chaos we fear, stand by and laugh in the face of it. They ridicule our dependency on silence and calm, they relish in our complete ineptitude in the face of change. If we ever saw them, they would be deemed monstrous - those who embrace what we reject, what else can they be? In thousands of encounters, we don't recognize them, even when they come into the light - reaching for our hands, our hearts, our passion…_

_Can the light see a shadow?_

_Can the sun ever see the moon for its brightness?_

_We are, often, too blinded by our own world, by our own reality, to recognize how full the darkness is. Once it becomes known to us, too often we are intoxicated - blinded in a momentary slip of focus._

_I was once a figure, silent in the face of chaos. A child. Alone. And in a moment, I was picked up by the beauty and the passion of the darkness… before I could fathom the repercussions I was addicted to the sound and smell of You._

An old man sat, with an open book in his wrinkled hands, in the middle of a crowded bookshop, rocking to and fro as he chanted the words aloud to the spellbound audience, grasping for the sound of his old, raspy voice. His eyes were glazed and half-closed; he knew these words by heart: the book in his hand was a mere formality, the momentary comfort of ceremony that the aged sometimes find in the physical presence of an item no longer necessary. At the close of the passage, the old man - possibly in his late 70's or early 80's with a wrinkled but jolly face, bald head, thick glasses, and stooped shoulders - bowed slowly to the crowd and shuffled off to a more secluded spot in the bustling shop, wiping his face and eyeglasses with an old handkerchief as he went. Necks craned as the crowd attempted to watch him go, without being too obvious.

A perky woman in a drab dress-suit held up her hands and walked to the space that the elderly man had so recently vacated. "Alright everyone, Mr. Lee has requested a short interlude between his reading and the subsequent book signing. In light of this, we have arranged for you three more short readings from local San Francisco poets to hear in the meantime. Help us support local artists by buying a copy of the city's anthology located on displays throughout the stores. And now, please welcome Mr. Roberts, a recent Berkeley graduate!"

A smattering applause welcomed a tall, gangly red-faced boy, who tripped over a chair and knocked over the stool before righting himself and beginning, in a tremulous voice, to read aloud. As Mr. Roberts stumbled and flailed, a small girl with dark hair from the back row of the seated audience members began to weave her way around the crowd and back to the small seating area where the previous reader had disappeared. Though Mr. Roberts had proved an excellent distraction, the perky attendant grabbed the girl's hand just shy of Mr. Lee's solitude.                                                                                                   

"Excuse me, girl. I must ask that you go back to your seat until the book signing segment commences." A black name tag pinned to the woman's lapel designated her "Ruby" - her too large smile revealed large gums and small, even teeth.

"That's alright, Ruby," came Mr. Lee's voice from behind the girl. "This girl is …. family."

Ruby raised her eyebrows and looked down at the girl whose arm she still held in a strong grip, "Family?" Her voice dropped a slight octave, sounding more natural than the high-pitched sing-song that had addressed the crowd just moments before.

The old man stood up and held his hands out to the girl, who took them in her own gently and kissed his cheek softly, "Family." He looked up at Ruby and smiled. "She is my mo-- my niece." He coughed slightly over the words, as if struggling to find a familial pronoun that would suit the girl he beamed down at. "The spitting image of my mother, this girl," he said softly.

As Ruby turned away, to once again pick up a display that Mr. Roberts had knocked over for the third time that day, she thought she saw a tear trickle down the girl's face at the author's words.

Once Ruby was out of earshot, the man turned to the girl and bowed deeply, "Mother. It has been long."

"Shen. It has been long. I am sorry," the young girl kissed the old man softly on the lips, her eyes bright and shining, before leading him gently to the couch. Once there, she began pulling items out of the large bag she carried on her shoulder - with only one hand, as the other was held tight by Lee Shen. A thermos, two small cups, and a small container of sugary biscuits were swiftly laid out on the low table before them. The girl wrested her hand from the author's grasp and began pouring a light, flowery-smelling hot liquid into the small cups and handed one to him gently. "Careful, it is hot."

"Mother, you should not be pouring me tea."

She let out a short hiss. "Stop calling me that! And don't be silly, anyway - your hands shake so, we would have lost half our tea." Her voice was gentle and teasing, like a child to an elder with whom they are intimately familiar or like that of a mother to a very small child.

Shen stared down at his tea, despondent. "I am so very aged, my dear. I curse these shaking hands daily."

The girl set down her tea and shook her head, taking his face in her hands - forcing him to look up into her own eyes, "I bless this body and these shaking hands every day. I am so proud of your strength and your age, Shen." Their foreheads touched and both closed their eyes, taking in a deep breath. Lee Shen held with his free hand onto the young girl's elbow and shook with unshed tears. When she finally pulled away from the embrace, her face was tear-stained. She laughed and wiped her eyes with the handkerchief formerly tucked into his front pocket. "Old men are not allowed to weep like young girls," she teased.

Lee Shen took a small sip from the cup of hot tea in his hand. "Why are you here?"

The girl's face turned solemn. "I am going back." She drew in a long, shuddering breath. "And I didn't… I couldn't… I'm here to say goodbye." The last words were barely a whisper, a confession to her tea rather than the man sitting beside her.

"Back?! Whatever for? Mother - please stay?"

The girl's face turned hard, "I must go. I cannot stay here any longer, there is more there for me…. I must go." Her voice cracked with the emotional stubbornness of a young girl, but her eyes were deep wells of something more… something harder and older than a teen girl's whim.

From a few feet away, they could see Ruby eyeing them; it was nearly time for him to begin the book-signing. He sighed and stood up, "You just don't want to watch me die." He spoke the words to the air, not looking down at her, and walked back over to Ruby. A few minutes later, he turned back and she had disappeared, leaving behind only the small container of biscuits.

Years later, a young woman would tell her husband's business partner and his wife the story of the day she met the famous Mr. Shen Lee - and don't you know? He cried when he wrote the inscription in her book! And he didn't even make it out to her either!

The book would sit on her mantle and her daughter's mantle, until it was lost in a freak home burglary - in which that book was the only thing taken - a symbol of an old, senile man who wrote to the wrong person, the sad joke of every dinner party and family reunion, the subject of every wedding toast, the last words the woman remembered as she herself sunk into mind-crippling age: The story of an old man, who must have been reminded of a lost love, who wrote a note to the wrong girl.

  
_Anna, I will always love you._

_~ Shen_

  



	2. Part One: Finding You, Leaving You ||  Chapter One: Growing Up in San Francisco

_Growing Up in San Francisco_

 

_To My Child_   
_From the rubbish heap_   
_I retrieve your lump of clay that_   
_I’ve thrown away,_   
_By the oil lamp_   
_I begin again to mould_   
_That which I have shattered –_   
_Your dreams,_   
_Your small cars, your small house,_   
_Your small, small spacecraft._

_Perhaps,_   
_They are too distant_   
_From your mother’s needs._   
_When I went downhill with the hoe heavy on my shoulder –_   
_How I wished you had cleaned the house,_   
_Lit the stove,_   
_And steamed a pot of rice . . ._

_Weeping,_   
_You retorted:_   
_‘Why must you write poems and sing songs?’_

_Ah my bright son_   
_I chew over your words._   
_Are they sweet? Are they sour?_

_All is deep in sleep,_   
_But your mother’s heart is like_   
_Your muddled lump of clay,_   
_Forgive me, my child,_   
_Let me kiss away your sullen tears._   
_Let me light us this lamp of night . . ._

_Fu Tianlin_

Sometimes, in the dead of night, the memory of sharp pain would create a dull ache in her bones. A mortal pain. A childhood pain. An ache in her limbs that dissipated as soon as she reached for consciousness. Nights in the first few years after her mother left she would try to sink back into the dream-memory, back into the pain, searching for a familiar face among the shadows her conscious mind pushed away.

Once he found her, though, once his small head was cradled under her chin in the darkness, small limbs wrapped around her waist, the small rise and fall of his chest pressed against hers that no longer moved except for the comfort of something lost… then the dreams gave his face and body the pain hers could no longer remember. Then, with his small frame dreaming of much more pleasant things, her mind could reach the distant memory of childhood, of mortality, of physical pain beyond silver or vervaine, of emotional pain beyond the momentary loss of her mother’s voice. He was a healthy, happy child. Yet every night she woke sobbing from the memory of him burning.

As he grew older and larger, she held onto his sleeping body more tightly. He began to wake hours before her. Without his warm body beside her own cold one, she would gasp and struggle as if the mat they shared had arms that were pulling her down. She would wake in a cold sweat, frantic with the dream of his small, round face bearing black eyes. But he would come into the room with a pot of hot tea and she would hold him and cry; rocking him back and forth even when he became so large that she fit on his lap like a doll.

She entered his life on the heels of an explosion, appearing out of the night like a ghost, walking through terror and fear with the calmest ease. She searched out the wounded and nursed them. She was a savior to many – an angel of death to those that needed it. Her dark eyes and wild hair told the story of an ancient time, one that he had no comprehension of. Through a community of broken bodies and broken dreams, she passed like a mist – just out of the corner of their eyes; as the people fought the earth, forging a road of metal into a wilderness time had tried to forget.

He was only four years old - or approximately that, there was no one around to ever tell her - when he found her, following her like a stray cat, holding a small wooden toy soldier, his bare feet and legs covered in mud. She would _say he was only four when he started following me_. He would say _I was only four when we found each other_.

Within minutes of his fixation, the women at the worker camp were handing her blankets and food for her son, to thank her for the work she had done in the dark of night. They cooed over his large brown eyes and his mild behavior. She searched through the tired faces and broken bodies for his proper mother; he doggedly followed close on her heels without saying a word. No one would help except to nod politely and offer her gifts, for the son with such a pretty face. It had been too long; she no longer knew the words they offered her. And so he stayed with her.

She found them lodging in a boarding house in the thick of the city. He began speaking only after following her through the city for a year. He said _Mother_ : with clarity and the hope of a small child. She never knew what his first words were, in his own tongue. She worried for a year that behind his expressive eyes was a damaged brain, a child incapable of speech. _Mother_ , he said, _I love you_.

And she cried at the sound.

They survived together, a teenage mother and a small child - sometimes an orphan girl and her brother, but this story only men believed, for a time. She hunted as he slept and then crawled onto their mat, cold as the stars, holding him until dawn. Days they spent wandering, her teaching and talking, him always silent and listening. She learned to speak to a child, to notice the world again. She narrated the people and places that they saw, the world that they walked on the fringes of - two children without a mother, a small girl playing house all alone, without a care in the world. She took what she wanted, as always, but now she wanted so little: some food for her companion, a few toys, a roof, and a straw mat. The hunger she had always felt began to fade in the light of this new life. She felt almost human again.

And around them, a city grew. Around them immigrants came with nothing between them but hope. Around them there was a whole world on the heels of awakening to its future. Anna spoke the words of change, but for once did not see the slow motion of time between day to day the way she always seemed to have. No, now the world was constantly in sharp focus, a dream of adventures and stories and fantasical unknowns. The child on her arm stood silent in the face of each day, while each moment she grew more frenzied - feeling time passing too quickly, change happening too swiftly. Afternoons she would take him to a park overlooking the city and they would watch it move beneath them. She could tell him things no human mother could have imagined. The stories of the whole city were there for her to hear, for her to tell, for him to learn.

 

One afternoon when the boy was still a child, but approaching manhood more quickly than she could see or fathom so caught was she in the beauty and wonder of their shared youth, he asked quietly if Mother was ever going to grow old like the other boy's mothers? She shook him fiercely, she had always begrudged him playmates of his own age, she was far too jealous of his time and his love to allow him much time on his own. How dare he play with others when all she wanted was for them to be happy together? She shouted and ranted, she cried at the inequity of it all, he was all his dear old mother had, could she not just have this one thing in all the world to call her own?

When he woke up the next morning, they were in new rooms above a tea house. She was his sister, he could never again call her Mother. She had a job in the tea house and he was to attend school with the sons of the mistress of the house. He cried and begged for them to go back to place they had been. He hugged her knees, intent to be her small boy again. But he was too tall and she was too small and she sighed, for there was nothing to be done about it. And though they both cried, he did go to school and he was the brightest in his class, for she had taught him well without him knowing. And though she cried, she did go to work in the tea house so that he could be a normal boy, with a sister who worked so hard.

And when he grew so tall and strong that he must work, he did. And they moved to a place with two rooms. Once, he asked why they could not be married now, he was old enough to be a good husband. But her eyes darkened to a frightening blackness and her teeth grew sharp and long, and though blood pumped through veins he never knew existed, he did not ask again while they lived there.

She still wrapped her body around him at night and rocked him to sleep, crying into his hair.

But to the world they were so very normal, just immigrant orphans from an exotic land, trying to make a new life.

 

Thirteen years after they met, he celebrated a birthday with some friends from the factory. They gave him alcohol and tried to buy him a woman. He laughed, they all laughed, and described with great delight the wonderful lives they would have - the homes and women and strapping sons that would bring them so much pride and happiness. The world would not wait for boys like these - these boys with so much vigor and lust and honor.

And as he stumbled home, he saw a small girl crying on the street and he walked up to her and offered assistance - his Mother had always cautioned him never to speak to strangers, especially those who pretended to be in need, but what harm could a child do?

But the child was her.

But there was no assistance to be given, only life.

He felt her teeth bite into his wrist before he could shout anything but her name, a moment of pain and the purest pleasure and she threw him away, his body rocketing through the air like a pebble thrown into the ocean.

He grasped for her and cried out, _My love, my love!_

All that responded was the pure, night air.


	3. Chapter Two: When We Were Younger, I Could Fool You

 

_**Small Rain  
** I’m coming._   
_I’m coming._

_Some loathe me, saying I’m autumn’s cold tears,_   
_Others welcome me, calling the music of spring._

_Perhaps I am tears,_   
_Perhaps I am song._

_Slowly I’ll trickle down pale cheeks,_   
_Softly sing in expectant hearts._

_Be it happy or sad,_   
_I’ll always be a rivulet flowing to the heart._

_In the boundless sea of emotions_   
_I am severance as well as confluence._

 

 

For a week, they avoided his bandaged arm, her weakness. He struggled to hold on to the silence, filling it with anecdotes from the lives of the people met - from the stories of the streets that he created just to hear a voice echoing through their rooms; obsessively filling the silence, maniacally holding the silence within himself - claiming ownership over sound and thought.

Daily she grew weaker, her skin paled, her hands shook as she poured the tea, her legs refused to walk with the speed with which he had always been so accustomed. He felt for the first time as though he had to stoop down, look down, to hear her voice, to see her face clearly… though it had been years since she had been anywhere near his height, she had always been commanding and full of energy, always on eye level with a quick wit and a slow smile. Daily he watched her lose her energy, lose her spark - like watching a long-lived candle slowly flicker out, the light that once permeated his life was now dwindling to nothing. Yet, he talked. Every moment he filled with a forced cheeriness, not allowing her to speak - his voice so loud it shook the windowpanes, it rocketed through her grieving mind like a siren.

On the eighth day, he let a single drop of his blood steep into the pot of rice he made for her. When he handed her a steaming bowl she threw it out of his hands and backed into a corner. His dimming candle becoming a caged animal in a matter of moments. She was too weak, she let her true face show - her eyes darkened to a pure, carnal black, dark veins appearing around her eyes, her teeth growing longer, sharper… she hissed.

He kept talking. Sat down on her mat and ate his own bowl of blood-rice and talked.

On the fifteenth day, he came to her with an open wound. He cried for her assistance, he shoved his arm at her with tears in his eyes, begging her to heal him - to bandage him - to care for him; his Mother. Isn't that what Mothers are for - to bandage their children's injuries and wipe away the tears.

She howled like a wounded animal and spit at him, clawing at the walls with weak arms.

On the twenty third day he found her tied to a chair in her room with heavy chains. He beckoned to her, tried to release her, but there was no recognition in her eyes - only blackness and fear and pain. He kissed her softly and she reared away, crashing to the ground.

That night and every night after, he spent on her mat, looking up at his creature and crying. Crying the sobs she once had cried when he was a child and she was so strong, but so fearful. Crying the tears of a child without a family, a home, or a name. Crying out in the night for the woman who had always held him as he slept…

He found that he did not know what sleep was without her small frame wrapped around his, weighing his dreams down so that he had no fear, holding his body in place so that it could not be harmed, wrapping with her strength and her resilience.

On the twenty fifth day, he brought a friend home from dinner. A new man from the factory with no family and no friends. A man no one would miss.

He fed the man a warm meal, they drank rice wine and toasted their good fortune, their jobs, their Mothers, their countries, and their city. And when the man was good and fed, warmed from the liquor and heavy with fatigue, Lee Shen hit the visitor over the head with a brick tied in a piece of sack-cloth.

He dragged the warm, breathing body into the room where she still sat in her self-imposed chains. He slit the jugular of the man, exposing blood, tissue, and the heady scent of copper into the room. Methodically he bent her chair over the man, forcing her face into the blood that seeped into the wood floors.

And she drank.

She drank from exhaustion, from starvation, from need. She shuddered and sighed over the body like a teenage boy over his first woman. She tried to pull out, pull away, while there was still blood pulsing through the body on the floor, but her man-child wouldn't allow it. One drink and she was not yet strong enough to fight back - not that she would, her own boy was too precious to fight for so long.

When the last ounce of blood was licked up by her small, darting tongue, only then did he sit her chair upright and loosen the chains.

Now there was only silence, neither had the words to speak.

And in the darkness and the silence, He had his first woman. His Mother, his Sister, his Friend, his Companion, his Protector, his Pet, his Lover. He drove himself into her like a conquering hero, hurting her with his force and his passion, she cried out and he smiled into her dark hair that he pulled and twisted with venom. She wrapped her arms around him like she had every night since he was a child in her arms, she cried the way he always remembered, as he kissed and bruised her face and limbs.

In the silence, he took her. And in the silence, when he sunk into her arms and drifted to sleep, her body weighing him down once more, he thought _Like we always have_.


	4. Chapter Three: Memories, They Flow Through the Air Like Cobwebs

_Women of the Red Plain_

_Know_   
_That waiting is your fate_   
_Having waited through the season of summer_   
_You begin to wait through the autumn days_   
_The nomad’s trail is turning browner day by day_   
_But the men still have not returned._   
_Those unable to bear the loneliness_   
_Married again_   
_Married men who hate a nomad’s life._

_Know_   
_That men never feel guilty for what they’ve done to women_   
_Born to roam on the grassland_   
_They come and go as they please_   
_He drinks (and often gets into fights)_   
_He dances (often till daybreak)_   
_Married for seven days he leaves_   
_Telling_   
_The bride to give him a son_   
_So she gives him a son_   
_But still stiffening his face_   
_As if she had given him a girl_   
_He won’t allow her to step into the house_

_Doesn’t know_   
_The waiting is longer than the grassplain_   
_Doesn’t know if she should give birth to another nomad son_   
_To cause some other woman_   
_Grief._

_Jia Jia_

  
Lee Shen was six years old. He loved to throw rocks into the ocean. He loved to drag his hands through rough, wet grass on the hottest days. He loved to watch people come and go on the street in front of the boarding house where he and his mother lived. Most of all, he loved his mother.

She was beautiful with dark, lightly curling hair that she wore loose unlike other mothers. She made the best pastries and treats and she let him have them for dinner while other boys' mothers made them eat nasty tasting things and she would say that you were only a young boy once and then laugh in a way that frightened him. She had a slight smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose that he liked to count as he sat on her lap, listening to her read aloud to him by the light of the moon. She was strong and brave like the knights and warriors in the stories she read him, not like the other mothers who seemed so weary and sad.

Lee Shen loved his mother and had every intention of marrying her one day. He told her so himself one sunny afternoon.

"Mother?"

"Shen?"

"Mother, will you marry me?"

Anna paused in her mending and looked down at the small boy, playing with his best marbles on the walk in front of their boarding house. "Marry me?"

Shen nodded and jumped up to stand beside her, his darling Mother. "The old potter is going to marry his third daughter to the man who delivers milk and his wife said that it was a good catch and that you should marry again so that I would have a father because a boy needs a father and Mother why would she say that because I don't want to share you and so I told her that I shall marry you if you need married, when I am tall enough to kiss your forehead because that's what Lea the girl who works in the big house on 43rd Street across from the market said was a good sign of a husband that he must be clean and polite and be tall enough to kiss her on the forehead and Mother how long until I am that tall because I don't think I could share you with anyone so much taller than me and the old potter's wife laughed at me when I said I should marry you, but I think she's just a silly old woman because Lea says that in this country we can marry for love and oh Mother," he sighed dramatically, "I just can't imagine anyone in the world as beautiful as you and how could I possibly love anyone more than my dear little Mother?" As he talked, Shen danced from foot to foot, hopping and tapping with the quick rhythm of his words, his small hands gesticulating dramatically as he relayed the important information that had been weighing so heavily on his young mind.

Anna set the old pair of boy-shorts down on the steps beside her and pulled the small boy towards her, brushing his long dark hair away from his eyes. Though he was only six, he already was close to her height, the young woman had such slight features and was so very small compared to her big-boned boy already. "My darling, you cannot marry me."

"Whyever not? I love you the most!" the poor boy's eyes filled with tears, this was not the answer he was expecting her to give him that bright and shiny afternoon.

Anna pulled him onto her lap, facing him towards the street, tucking her chin on his shoulder. "Little boys cannot marry their mothers, small one. That isn't how things work."

He sniffed and ducked his head, his small grubby fingers making patterns on her leg. "But other mothers aren't special like you?"

His little mother chuckled deep in her throat, "That's true, small one. But soon you won't be small anymore. Soon you will be big and strong and you will fall in love with someone strong like you." She tickled his stomach lightly, in just the right spot with just the right touch - the touch that only a mother knows - and he squirmed in her arms, his face scrunching up in that unmistakable look that children have when they know they are still angry, but still they want to laugh. "And when you are all grown, then you will want to leave me, like all big tall boys do, so that you can have adventures of your own."

"Wull… I want you to come with me," his voice was slurred and mushed, his tears and disappointment thickening his voice.

"Remember the story I told you? The one about the girl whose mother is trapped by a wicked witch and she has to wait many, many years before she can get her mother back?" Shen nodded sullenly. "Well, that is your Mother's story. My story. My adventure. And when you are all grown big and you find your own adventures, I need to go find my mother and free her from the wicked witch."

"Why can't I help you?"

"Oh, sweeting," she rocked him back and forth and tears welled up in her eyes. "When it comes time, you won't want to."

Shen jerked himself free and stood on the step above her, puffing out his chest, "I don't care what you say or what the potter's old grouch of a wife says, I will marry you and I will pull your mother from the witch's spell myself."

Anna stood up and curtseyed to the brave knight, "You will always be my champion?"

The small boy stamped his foot on the stone steps, "Dragons couldn't keep me from you, Mother."


	5. Chapter Four: Floating in the Wake of Your Love

_I am a Man_

_If a sudden storm rises tonight_   
_Don’t be frightened, Mama._   
_I am the man in the house._

_And Mama you do have a man._   
_If you ever receive a wire_   
_Sent from heaven,_   
_That must be from your son, the great man_   
_Who wants to pluck a bright star_   
_To shine for you as you write deep into the night_

_Fu Tianlin_

  
In the morning his small creature was still silent and weak. He filled the silence that she once filled, his Mother who had taught him about the dark without realizing it. His Mother whose words had once filled his world, was still silent and so he began to speak for her. He sliced his wrist and fed her like an infant – as she once had fed him – cradling her in his lap and singing ancient ballads in an ancient language, as her small tongue darted carefully over his skin, her teeth only slightly grazing the small hairs on his skin, causing him to shiver.

The body was left on the floor.

They moved far across the city, to a larger boarding house. He told her to get them a room. She used her words and eyes like a magician and they lived like kings. She was his little wife and he doted upon her, slipping into her and crying his release as she cried silently. She was his little wife and he doted upon her, bringing her beautiful girls to destroy for his pleasure, bringing her strong men to beg for her attentions.

She was his wife; he only called her Mother to hurt her. She was not to work, but to command their needs from others and he was to while away the daylight hours as he pleased. She cried and begged for them to go back to place they had been. She hugged his knees, intent to be his little mother again. But he was too tall and she was too small and he laughed, for this was what he wanted. And though she cried, he caressed her with the attentions of a perfect husband. And though she was stronger and faster, he was her whole world and she dared not strike back.

He loved her.

It was a hard, bright love; the possessive love of a young man new to the world of physical pleasure. The love of a young boy who had only ever known the affection granted him by a hard, dark thing. The deep and intrinsically vulnerable love of child raised by darkness and chaos; he struck out at her for he had no means with which to strike out at the world. She was his world. Her soft words had always been his reality, he treasured her, he basked in her creation, he was her creation.

He was her world.

And she loved him. It was a passive, uninterested love. She loved him the way she loved the taste of a girl in her first moon. She loved him the way a human loves their childhood dog, the creature comfort of his body had kept the fear and the hard, looming future at bay. The way one loves the fact of the sun and the moon – large astral bodies that belong to our world, but we rarely give proper attention to. He was her sun and moon, what was life without him … she refused to think of the lives she had lived before his. His simple life that kept time with his body the ways hers refused to do, was now and was all. He was the passing of time, the safety of the world, the threat of the world held at bay.

He loved her.

  
And so she loved him. She loved his love. She felt his possession wrap around her like a blanket and she buried herself in it, relinquishing herself to his attention and his obsession as she always had. She took him inside her with no more thought than with anyone else – her body had been of late a basic necessity, a way to eat, a useful prop in her hunting. A trick her own mother had never allowed her, one she rarely allowed herself - for what was the point? She was detached from her own body, from the humanity in it - from the darkness it represented, it was just a vehicle that propelled her to and fro. She didn't remember always feeling this way. No... she had once felt her body so full of power and promise, of weakness and will. She had once been connected to the world through her body, but now all she felt was blackness. An empty void that he filled each night with his love.

She was a good little wife. She had been a good little mother.

And his love was full of pain that she pushed aside after that first night. That first night full of darkness and terror and pain and tears. She pushed aside the memory of his want and placated his needs. He was her champion and she was his maiden. They fit so easily together, that she clung to anything she could continue to hold onto. What mother wants to lose her child? What woman wants to lose the man she loves above all other men?

He loved her. And she was a good wife.

 

Innocence playing at darkness, children playing at adulthood.

 

Sometimes, when he spent inside her, the memory of sharp pain would create a dull ache in her heart. A mortal pain. A childhood pain. An ache in her spirit that dissipated as soon as she pushed away the memory, driving him further into her - his weight and fixation forcing her into the present. Nights after he made love to her restless, silent body she would try to pull into his pleasure, away from the pain, searching for an among the shadows that filled her conscious mind.

He would pull her naked onto his chest and they would lie together as they always had.

Once her small head was cradled under his chin in the darkness, small limbs wrapped around his waist, the small rise and fall of his chest pressed against hers that no longer breathed except for the comfort of something lost… then the dreams she once had finally dissipated. In this new life of husband and wife, her rest was no longer betrayed by memories she could not physically withstand. Now, in this moment, with his large frame beneath her dreaming of much more pleasant things, then her body could escape into dreamless sleep. Yet every night she woke sobbing with no memory of why. And he would kiss her eyelids and caress her cheek with the softness of the child he still was. And she would forget the pain he never could know he caused.  
  
He repeated the stories she had told him when his small arms used to encircle her body at night. He went through them all, his memory sharp, his interest keen, his devotion to her words final. He told stories and she slept in his arms. She let her world fill with her words floating through his lips, his voice recreating the world she built out of love for him, into a world he built for her. After a few weeks, he began to build castles in the air. His life with his dear little wife was full of wondrous adventures and love and exotic, far-away places. She drowsily smiled through the stories that he repeated from her lips. She lay frigid with fear through the stories of the life he planned.


	6. Chapter Five: Saying Goodbye, My Dear

_**Untitled  
** I slipped down the terrace, watching you leave_   
_By the small leafy path._   
_Wait! Are you going far, very far?_   
_I dashed down, stopping in front of you._   
_‘Are you scared?’_   
_Silently I caress the button of your jacket._   
_Yes, I am scared._   
_But I won’t tell you why._

_We strolled around the river bend._   
_The night, though soothing, moved us,_   
_Arm in arm we walked along the bank,_   
_Threading in and out of the cinnamon trees._   
_‘Are you happy?’_   
_Looking up, I find the stars swarming towards me._   
_Yes, I am happy._   
_But I won’t tell you why._

_You bent over the desk,_   
_Discovering the awkward lines I wrote._   
_Blushing deeply I snatched up my poems._   
_Solemnly, tenderly you blessed me._   
_‘Ah, you are in love.’_   
_I secretly sigh._   
_Yes, I am in love,_   
_But I won’t tell you why._

_Shu Ting_

  
Anna sat comfortably on a mat with her legs curled beneath her, at a low table with an elaborate tea on display when Shen burst through the door. He smiled at the sight of her, apparently pleased with her new gaudy creation. He had recently demanded that she start wearing more traditional clothing while in the house, but his knowledge of their own "tradition" was faulty at best. Consequently he began bringing home a various amalgam of rich, gaudy, Oriental fabrics with no clear shape or any unifying sizes that Anna was forced to wrap about herself as best she could, to his beaming satisfaction. Though, she was never allowed to tie back her long, curling hair - resulting in a bizarre blend of colors and styles that fit neither their long-forgotten motherland, nor in any way the world outside their door.

Her body was the microcosm of the bizarre furnishings and trinkets that Shen brought home each night, their rooms a mess of East and West - displaying only fads and popular trends, with no clear knowledge of either culture, though Anna had been so long outside the world, she no longer knew what the origins were of the items brought her. No, Anna had been so long in Shen's world, she no longer had any distinct knowledge of the world outside her door. Which suited Shen just fine, as he had built himself a palace in their rooms that Anna was forbidden - no, chastised - not to leave. For _, they were in a strange part of town and she would get lost so quickly and someone was sure to take advantage of her and why would she want to leave when he brought her everything she could desire_?

How can you build your own world, if your subjects are able to come and go as they please?

"Little one, what have you made me today?" Shen eyed the spread of pastries and delicacies on the table before kissing Anna fully on the mouth, jerking her head up with a snap, a small whimper swallowed by his desire.

Anna sat in silence as Shen ate. "Mother, I've been thinking," he began after a few moments, taking a long swallow of tea, "it is my birthday, again, in a few days. And this situation is just getting ridiculous."

Anna stared down at her hands, not even allowing herself to blink. She knew what was coming. For weeks now he had been hinting. His behavior had become even more erratic; his curiosity in her condition seemed to grow hourly. He asked her dozens of questions about her age, her turning, her mother, if there were any others in the area, how to find them, how to kill one, how to fight one. She laughed at herself; it seemed almost ridiculous that it had taken so long for this to happen.

Shen leaned back on one arm and casually lifted one knee so that he could prop the other arm carelessly upon it, "I'll be twenty this year - or something like that, we don't really know, do we?” His voice was full of pleasantries and smiles, but Anna flinched at them as though he had struck her. “And you, mother, don't look a damn day over sixteen." Shen drew in a deep breath and smiled at her, "I think it's high time you turned me, don't you? I'm not even sure why we waited so long."

Anna stood up quickly. "I'm leaving, Shen." Her voice was low, nearly a whisper.

Her son stared up at her, "Leaving?!"

Anna unwrapped herself from the gaudy rope draped indelicately over her small frame, revealing a traveling dress in the latest European style. She picked up a hat and purse from the ground and pinned up her hair, placing the hat atop her head with a practiced hand. She looked down at him staring and laughed, twirling for him, "Does it look alright?"

"You can't just... I won't let you!"

Her face turned hard, black veins appearing on the edges of her cheekbones and filling her eyes with blackness, in a split second she was straddled on top of him - her gloved hand at his throat, "Let me? My boy I've "let you" do far too much to me and yourself these past two years. Enough is enough. It's time for you to grow up, and me to go."

And then he was alone in the room, struggling for air as tears streamed down his face.  
  
Later, drunk and bleary-eyed he found a crisp white envelope, sealed with smeared red wax, on a pile of fresh laundry. He thought very seriously of burning it. _He thought very seriously of reading it._ In the end, he put the letter in an old hat box of hers, along with the few pieces of jewelry she had left, her hairbrush, and his old wooden toy soldier.

Every month or so for years, another letter sealed with red wax would appear at his doorstep - regardless of how many times he moved. For years there came a flood of letters, he would place the new with the others - unopened, in a dusty hatbox with other discarded mementos of his past. After a while, the frequency ebbed, he began receiving less. Yet, on his wedding day, on the day of his first child's birth, on the day of his wife's mother's death, on the day of his daughter's wedding, there was another letter. The perfect white squares scarred with drizzled red wax found him in moments when he had almost forgot, a constant reminder of the life he once had wanted, of the person he once wanted to be. Reminders that he had no desire to read.

Until one afternoon, when he found his wife - a strong, tall woman with sharp features and a quick, easy smile - sitting on the floor in their bedroom, holding an opened letter and crying. Shen cringed at the sight, wondering in anguish how soon his life was about to fall around his ears, he entered the room hesitantly, shyly.

But she loved them! Oh how she loved these treasures he had written! They told a story, a beautiful story of a woman searching for her mother in a dark and exotic world. They told a story of love and loss and betrayal and forgiveness. They told a story of humanity overcoming darkness. She hugged him to her and whispered through her tears and laughter _I never knew that you could write this way, my darling!_ Oh she apologized for sneaking through his privacy, she begged him to let her read the rest - for him to read them to her. She begged him for the ending.

And he just cried into her hair, listening to his wife tell the story he had neglected to read. 


	7. Chapter Six: Saying Goodybye, My Child

_Impression  
 **I Feel the Sunlight  
**  Along the long, long corridor_   
_I walk forward . . ._   
_Before me stand the dazzling bright windows,_   
_By my sides white walls glare and glisten as_   
_Sunlight and I stand in silence._

_Sunlight is strong, Ah, so strong that_   
_Its warmth freezes my footsteps,_   
_Its radiance takes my breath away._   
_Light of the whole universe congregates here._

_Nothing else exists, this I know._   
_Only I, secure in sunlight_   
_Stand still for ten seconds_   
_Ah, ten seconds can last a quarter of a century!_

_At last, I dash downstairs, push open the door_   
_And run into the sunlight of spring._

_Wang Xiaoni_

Anna stared down at the blank sheet of paper in front of her. Shen would be back any moment. What could she say? How could she explain why she was leaving? It was too much for one slip of paper, no pen in the world could tell her child all the reasons why she was abandoning him.

 _My child_ ,

The words frightened her, staring up at her in sharp black against the bright white of the page. _Child_. _Man. What difference did it make?_ She was still leaving, still walking away from the world she had built him. Anna looked around the room and swallowed hard, her knees seemed to be pushing into the floor with deliberate force, the weight of her body grinding her bones into the hard floor as she sat – so still – with that paper in front of her.

She sighed and reached for the paper, determined to crumple it up, throw it away … Shen would never read any note she left him, anyway. He was far too stubborn to read her words after she was gone. She knew that the way she knew the sound of his heart beating, the way she felt him in her dream, the way he _was_ – ingrained as that small truth of his existence was on her very being.

_My child_

It seemed so incongruous, so impossible, to call the man who towered above her a child. It seemed as if, overnight, he had transformed from a sweet-faced boy to the dark man who covered her whole face with one hand as she cried out when he entered her. Who was able to hold her in his arms the way she had once rocked him to sleep when he was an infant. He was still so much a child, but the promise of manhood sat upon his shoulders. The promise of a future that was always outside of her reach was in his stature and being. He was so much a man – so much more than she would ever be a woman.

She wiped away a tear and crossed out _My_ with ferocity.

_I am a child._

A truth. A bright, hard truth that he did not see yet. He saw, with large trusting eyes, his mother – a woman grown and strong. A woman with the knowledge of a thousand women, a woman who had lived the lives of thousands of women, a woman _grown_. But she was stunted – so much more stunted than he realized, than he ever could have guessed. His mother, the light of his life, the fragile string he held to connect him to the ground, _his mother_ … in truth so much more a child than he could know. It made _him_ a child, she would someday recognize. Her inability to be fully grown had stunted him. Her inability to grow and change, made him as dark and stagnant as her.

For now, all she could see was darkness… the hinting shadows in his eyes telling, but not yet revealing to her fully, the pain of a life lived in the presence of death. Of a life lived halfway.

She was a child still. Unable to fully understand the darkness she saw in him, the darkness that she held within her. She was selfish, hard, dark – the walking shell of a girl who once was. And so was he. And as a child herself, Anna had no way to understand this – she had always ever known darkness and shadows.

_(How does one explain shadows to the darkness?)_

It was on the night he took her, when her blood lust had gotten the better of her, and he had followed her into that decadence, that she first knew something was wrong. What it was, she could not place it. He hurt her in ways she did not understand – could not fully understand. She was so very innocent, his mother. He brought her into womanhood with force and aggression, satisfying his selfishness as she lay on the hard floor beneath him – crying out for the boy she had once known. Crying out for the life she had once had.

He took her with all the love he was capable of – and she could not feel it. She went numb with the pain and fear, allowing him to come again and again because it made him seem so happy. She had lived her life according to his happiness, shaping her world around his presence, how could she not follow him into this stage? How could she not be with him as he discovered something of his own power of feeling?

And still he called her mother in his sleep, after he was sated, while she shook with sobs and confusion.

_Something is wrong—_

She was not sure what it was, the glow in Shen’s eyes as he followed her to the bedroom each night, as he looked upon her naked body. She felt only calm silence, it was a roar in her ears blocking out his whispered words. Words she could not repeat, words that she did not feel, words she could not even bear to hear fully.

She compelled a woman on the street one day when Shen was at work. She interrogated a street-woman about Shen’s actions. The answers made her cheeks blush a bright scarlet, caused the blood to rush to her eyes. She sampled the woman, trying to find the answers in her blood – but that night she felt even further removed from her boy, her Shen, as he took her in his arms. She watched his face curiously as he found release and called out her name with lust and love. She held him that night and wondered – wondered hard what she was doing wrong, why she could not feel him, why his actions frightened her so.

_Something is wrong with me._

She thought back to nights in Paris with her mother and Katherine, nights when she hid behind doors and listened to the women trade secrets of men and women. She remembered the nights she found her mother, stripped bare, fast asleep with her limbs wrapped around naked figures she never saw again. There was so much missing from her _life_. She struggled to find meaning in the chaos of her memories, but found mostly darkness.

_I must find out, I must find the answers— I am so confused!, I have no means to follow you into this life you lead._

Her words were garbled. Her mind was buzzing. She looked down at the paper, at the incoherent ramblings of a mother ripping herself from a child fully grown – going to a place she could not follow. She could not understand the reasons she only knew that she had to leave. Not only for herself, the child that could withstand anything, who could fake a real life without qualms - she had been empty - before, she had been empty always until she had him, a child by the hand to lead her into humanity, but for his sake all the more - she could not fully comprehend the damage she had done to the psyche of her own child.

A child cannot raise a child; a monster cannot nurture humanity if they have never known it.

She had raised him – a child leading a child. She had played house the way a very small girl dotes upon her favorite doll. It was unfair, to declare her emotional attachment to this child as similar to that of a girl to a doll, but it was all the more true for that excess. Children have the strongest of imaginations, are more capable of adults to escape into the realm of fantasy and stay there.

Shen was not a plaything in his infancy, not really. Only that was all he ever could be.

Anna was not a plaything in his search for adulthood, not really. Only that was all she ever could give.

The world they created around themselves, these hard, selfish, bruising children – was a world of fancy and unreality. As close as Shen brought her to reality, Anna dragged him away. As close as Anna brought him to humanity, Shen dragged her away. Their presence to each other was toxic in the way that only children can be damaging to each other. They fought the influence of reality together, for the sake of the other, drawing themselves into a toxic pool of corrupted love. Love as only children can corrupt it.

_I will always love you, Anna_

The letter was sealed and placed with his childhood things. If he found it, what could he possibly learn? If he read it, what could he possibly understand? Possibly none of it, possibly all of it. Anna had no way to know, had no other way to express her own confusion and sadness.

 

Shen sat down in front of her, the silence roared in her ears and she saw only red.

She whispered slowly and quietly as he ate, “I must find out. I must find out why – why I _am_. Why I cannot remember becoming this way. Who my mother is and where we come from. I _must_ learn all the things about myself I have never before thought to ask.” Silent tears streamed down her face as she watched him eat; as she told him all the emotions she had kept hidden away for so long.

When he looked up at her, the tears had dried on her face, leaving long streaks and making her face feel stiff and unnatural. “I want you to turn me.” His face was pleading, full of hope. He so desperately wanted to be all that his darling mother was.

She stood up quickly and bit out, “I’m leaving, Shen.” She shook herself loose from the robes he kept demanding she wore and spun around – showing off her new outfit, laughing with the freedom of it, “Does it look alright?”

He stared down at her, she saw in his eyes questions she could not answer – emotions she could not return. She thrust his seeking, moist hands from her with showy disdain, her face hardening into a mask so that he did not see, _he could not see_.

“These past two years,” she choked down a sob and drew in a shaky breath. “Enough is enough. It is time for you to grow old and happy. It is time for me to leave.” She knelt down beside him where he had fallen to the ground and kissed him softly on the forehead, her gloved hand gently circling his neck, allowing herself one last indulgence as her thumb lightly grazed his Adam’s apple with affection. Feeling _(she felt for the last time)_ life surging beneath his skin.

She stood up with tears in his eyes and swept out the door. The sound of his sobbing followed her into the hallway. They haunted her for months, until the pain of leaving him lessened, until she heard word that he was prosperous and happy. That he lived.

_ps – Leaving is the only way I can assure you will stay alive. Please, my darling – if nothing else, Please LIVE._


	8. Part Two: When They Tell My Story || Research

 

_Paper Boats  
_ -           _to mother_

_Never willing to waste a sheet of paper,_   
_I save and save_   
_Then fold them into small, small boats_   
_And throw them into the sea from my ship._

_Some are blown back into the portholes,_   
_Others are stuck on the stern, soaked by waves,_   
_And I, undiscouraged, keep on folding and hoping_

_That one will finally reach its destination._

_O mother, if you ever see a white tiny sail in your dream,_   
_Don’t be startled by its unexpected presence for_   
_It was folded by your loving daughter to carry homeward_   
_Across the sea and mountains her love and sorrow._

_Bing Xin_

               

 

_When They Tell My Story_

 

_There once was a child born of snow and fire; taken in by the arms of death. She was found in the midst of blackness, the smoldering embers of an entire village at her icy feet, as snow fell around her ears. It is said that she did not cry nor make a sound as Death's embrace picked her out of the ash. Stories tell of a child walking through ice with Death as her guardian. A child with skin as white as the snow she was birthed from, her hair the color ash, her lips stained with the warm blood of children._

 

 

November 1899

 

My darling Shen,

I hope this letter finds you in good health. My contact in San Francisco sends word that you have moved and will forward this to your new residence. I can only hope that this means you received my letter last month and pulled the government bonds out of the safety deposit box in the bank downtown. (Remember the one in the red brick building near the iced cream shop you loved so much?) I had meant them to be for your birthday, but I see no harm in you using it now instead.

I have arrived at the perfect time; our homeland is riddled with war and rebellion, enabling me to slip easily in and out of the chaos without notice. The voyage was quite difficult and so much longer than I imagined it would be, and it became quite uncomfortable travelling alone. Here, a girl of my size travelling alone draws attention. I cannot pass so easily as an older woman among these people. Which is why I am so grateful for the cover of rebellion upon my arrival, a young girl alone is not unusual in these times.

I must dash off – my first stop proved fruitless. All of the local monasteries have been completely destroyed and the monks have fled. (You remember of course, from my previous letters, that I have a vague recollection of my mother mentioning religious figures taking care of us when I was young to her friend Katherine. I am still hoping to find a record of her within religious texts around the time we were turned.)

I will always love you,

Anna

 

 

 

_It was I, a young apprentice to the order at the time, who found the original documents in an Ancient text, detailing the resurrection of the Unborn Mother, who was forced to destroy the history of this woman. Many years have passed, and now in my death years, confined to a bed, I seek out you - my cousin's youngest grandchild - to keep these papers. I feel the stirrings of rebellion and violence in the air, on the wind. I feel that She may be used again, to our detriment. One cannot hold a woman hostage for so long, before she begins to plot her escape. My son, this may be the end of our world._

_And so we deserve._

 

 

 

February 1900

 

My darling Shen, I wish you the happiest of birthdays!

Do you remember why we chose this day to celebrate you? It was only a few months after you followed me out of the railroad worker’s encampment and we had finally arrived in San Francisco. You were amazed and delighted by the city; it was so much larger than anything you had ever experience – except the mountains and valleys we had crossed on our way. Everything fascinated you! You wanted to stop at every step to investigate every person and thing you saw. I had never met a more curious child. I was also swept up in the excitement – something I have never told you – my mother had never allowed me to explore cities alone. The most I had seen of cityscapes was from behind the glass windows of coaches and from the high seat of buggies. My darling, I had been to the Royal Opera in London, but had never walked through the streets of a city as if I were a native. With you, I was given that opportunity. We were both swept away by the energy and new _ness_  of everything around us. Along the way, men and women kept directing us (two lost children) towards the center of the China district.

Do you remember what happened next, my darling? It was the Chinese New Year and there was a big celebration. While in the hubbub of the city, there were no signs. And then! We rounded a corner and there was a large parade, a large dragon leading the way. You clapped and cheered! It was as if the city had opened its doors just to welcome you in!

I decided from that day to always celebrate our new life, the day we arrived. I could never be sure as to your real day of birth, even after all these years I have been unable to find any hint of your birth mother (of course I kept searching, my love). This day, this was not the day we found each other, that is what I believe you always assumed, but actually the day we found a home.

I will always love you,

Anna

ps – this search seems fruitless, but I am determined and have not given up hope

 

 

_In the time of the Great War, there was a great loss of incalculable worth. It is written in the Ancient texts that the Emperor beat his chest with sorrow and died shortly after, his heart broken by the loss. No one is certain as to the item that was lost, whether it was stolen by opposing forces or one of the Emperor’s own. Obscure texts, damaged by time, speak of a beautiful warrior-woman who was connected to this great prize. Many scholars suggest this woman was the guardian of the Emperor’s greatest prize, as well as his heart. She might also be attributed to the line of Royal representatives of the Divine Mother - young women throughout this dark time who stood at the Emperor’s side as his divine council and mistress. Ancient scholars speak of many throughout time, always young, beautiful, and strong. Their only connection, it seems, to be the their high and secretive status within the court - kept away from all but the Emperor himself and a few religious servants. After this war, there appeared to be no need for such a woman and the position was never again filled._

 

 

 

 

August 1900

I have found something! Oh my darling, I have found something!

About a month ago, I gave up my pursuit in large cities. The rebellion has hidden me, but it has also made it impossible to find any clues as to the whereabouts of my mother’s beginnings – or my own, for that matter. The temples I have found intact are full only of warriors that see me for what I am – and have been trained to resist compulsion. All of this precaution, yet I have come across no others like me (a small group of Europeans was terrorizing an area I was in, but I ignored them – they were too reckless to notice my presence). I can only conclude that my mother is known by these religious men – they seemed particularly frightened of my presence and I do not feel inclined to kill them, as it will not help my cause. (Your mother – ever diplomatic.)

Last week, I arrived at a small hamlet just outside of the fighting. It is a place that time has forgotten. A small village on the banks of a river, most of the inhabitants either rice farmers or fishermen. Many of the men have abandoned their families and work to join the skirmishes happening all around, leaving mainly old men, women, and children behind. I was afraid that my youth and appearance would set me apart – make me an outsider (oh, if you could  _see_  the people here, my boy. I struggle with the languages and dialects daily, communication is a struggle I was not anticipating. I can understand almost anything said to me, but the words trip and fall flat on my tongue. I am woefully out of practice. And I obviously do not belong here, my hands are not rough from work, my hair is unbound, I walk about in a state of constant isolation from these people), but the elder women took me immediately in, feeding and washing me as if I were their own child. It is still difficult for me to communicate, but I look more like I belong, dressed as I am now, and have been helping (as much as I can) with the gardening and mending.

While gardening, the women tell each other stories. It is just like when you were young and I spun stories out of the air, explaining the world to your curious mind (and my ignorant one) as best I could with the means I had. I was ignoring the talk at first, it falls into such an easy rhythm that I believed at first the women were praying or chanting verse to each other. But these women are far too rustic, their stories are oral and ancient – like the  _Odyssey_  once was (though I know you always preferred the  _Illiad_  and Achilles to Odysseus’ travels). I discovered this morning, that the stories the women are telling are of a “Divine Mother” – a woman who does not die, who traveled throughout the land, who once was human and disappeared with a child hundreds of years ago. It was all I picked out of their words before I ran inside to write this to you.

One of the consequences of living beyond the reach of rebellion is that I am also out of the way for any message carrier. Once a month, a man from a local village comes to trade sweetgoods and knick-knacks with the locals, taking fresh produce into the city for profit. In these hard times, men like this are not only profitable – they are brave and always under threat of death from opposing forces and the unchecked thieves on the roads. I trust this man to get this letter to a ship safely, so that you might know I am alive and have found a possible key to my past!

I will always love you,

Anna

 

ps- The wood carving was done by a small boy about seven or eight from the village. He is very shy and I am not even quite sure of his name - the women seem to call him something that translates roughly to “little rabbit” and I get the strong impression he is an orphan, as you once were. He came to me in the garden three days ago told me to send it to my boy across the water, so that you would know I am being cared for. And then he disappeared, I haven’t seen him since. The whole village wears similar totems on cords around their necks, either just out of affection for the boy or for some other reason - I have yet to determine which.

 

July 1910

Shen~

 

Today I finally continue on my way, I have been too long in the same place. I had lost track of time – only my letter writing to you has had any effect on my sense of passing time. Until last week, when the small boy (who carved the treasures I have been sending to you all this time) was _married_. Ten years have passed, as I farmed and visited with the old women of this village. I have buried many; I have been in the birthing rooms of far less. Never has one of these people questioned my age – or any of my bizarre habits. Not once has my presence been remarked upon with anything other than affection. I could not have known this before arriving, but this village – my village – had been terrorized in the past by bandits and the larger cities, livestock taken in the night, young girls and strong boys taken at midday amidst tears and supplications. My presence –  _my hunger_  – such as it is, has prevented any random passerby. I was never discouraged from hunting, for it kept them safe. I only hope that upon leaving they will stay safe for some time.

I have reacquainted myself with the language of my childhood… my  _proper_ , human childhood. A time I still do not remember.

The first letter I wrote to you upon arriving here – I recall being so very excited on the discovery of a folk story that seemingly was about my mother. I still believe this to be true, and so today will begin a journey to a small village to the far North of here, where the elders say a woman who knows all the old stories still lives.

I will always love you,

Anna

 

ps- A mutual friend has told me of your daughter’s birth. I have selfishly not mentioned her in any of my most recent letters, for the sake of your privacy. I am overwhelmed with joy and love for you and your child!

 

 

 

 

 

_There once was a widower with three young sons who longed for his wife, for they had been children together and his heart still beat for her. Surrounded by the memories of his child-bride in their home village, the man decided to move his children to the mountain in the North. There, in the snow, his cold heart might be at peace._

_Along their journey, the man and his sons came upon an overturned cart in the dead of night. There were three dead men on the road – killed obviously by bandits. The youngest son ran out of fear from the dead and fell upon a weeping woman, hugging to her a young girl. The father became obsessed with the woman immediately. Her beauty was that of legend, her long, slim neck holding up a strong face. Her daughter was equally beautiful. She was nothing like his dead wife, for she was taller, stronger, broader of face. There was nothing meek or transparent about the woman weeping in the forest. There was nothing of his dead wife in this new, mysterious woman from the road._

_Together they travelled under the guardianship of the father through the wilds of the mountains. Along the way, the beautiful and mysterious woman fell in love with the widower. Upon arriving at the top of the mountain, in the small village where the widower’s cousin had settled with her husband, they settled on a small farm and lived happily together. And so it went for several years._

_And the villagers grew fearful. For shortly after the arrival of this new family, a darkness grew in the wilds that surrounded the secluded hamlet. There were only whispers and unsubstantiated fears; children told stories of a wild beast that stalked women and children day or night; old wives and grandmothers whispered of a fear no one knew the root of. The farmer’s new wife and daughter were kept under lock and key as his paranoia grew and more villagers left…_

_Soon, only the farmer and his sons’ families remained, with a few elderly and a handful of orphans left behind as the villagers fled their homes from fear. None of these villagers ever arrived at their destinations, never heard from or seen again. The husband had grown weak and thin from living in fear for so many years, while his wife and her daughter seemed to grow stronger and more livid with each passing month. His sons urged him to leave, begged him to leave this empty village haunted by the memory of life and the growing darkness around. His daughters in law cried nightly for their missing families, for the safety of their young children._

_The father secluded himself in his house with his shining wife and his beautiful daughter. With each passing day, he doted upon her with more ferocity than the previous. And as his sons withdrew from his house and hated his tenacity, his unwillingness to leave that haunted place, the father clung all the more to his bright-eyed daughter. Soon, loving the child more than the mother._

_So great was his love and devotion, the farmer never noticed that his dear daughter never aged, that she was cold as ice in his arms, that her eyes shown with an unfathomable darkness. And as his grandchildren, daughters, and sons began to disappear into the darkness, the farmer only saw the shining youth of his daughter – her agelessness tricking him into believing that no time had passed at all since the arrival to the town. Her brightness pulling him into the darkness. Until she, too – was gone. Disappearing with her tall, dark mother into the night, when there was no one left but the father who had loved her._

_Some say, the farmer still sits, waiting in a small shack in a haunted village, staring at the door and waiting for his shining daughter to come inside from play – her arms full of wildflowers. But the village and the farm have been lost to time and snow, buried beneath the years._

 

 

 

October 1920

I write in the hush of mourning, the death pall left behind me so that I may write to you on this, such a sad day.

 

I sit on the porch and watch the sunrise and think of you – my child. I think of your children; your daughter must be nearing sixteen years old by now! How is it that time has passed so quickly for me? Does it pass as quickly for you? watching your children grow taller and faster and stronger – struggling always to keep them still, just for a moment, wishing that time would pass you by, wishing that they might stay small and innocent for only a moment longer… Even now, as your own children age – you are also aging. Walking as swiftly as they towards oblivion, racing headlong into your own extinction. There is no possible way for me to explain what it is like to be still in the face of so much rushing and racing. How still and static I seem to myself, my own face in the mirror never changing or adapting. The pain I have felt does not mark itself upon my body, my laughter and tears do not leave scars etched across my face, there is no proof that I have lived a single day.

It was something I could not explain to you when you were a young man – so full of your own physicality and strength, so at home and content in your body – how much  _a life is worth_.

I do not mean to be morbid, my dear. I only wish you to enjoy every moment. The aches and pains of aging; the emotional scarring your children leave behind as they rip themselves from your arms into the world, with no fear and no concern for their own well-being.  _Be gentle on them, as I was incapable of being gentle on you._

Do you see, now? Do you see what I see?

If I were to arrive on your doorstep tomorrow – I would be taken for a runaway. How could you explain my youth to your own children? Children who are now in age so very similar to me – possibly even older, I cannot say for sure. In all of my travels and collecting of stories and clues, there is no hint as to my real age, no value I can place upon the life I once lead.

I love you always,

Anna


	9. Conclusion

November 1934

 

It sickens my heart to write these words. I can only hope you keep this letter, so that my research will not be in vain. I have neglected to keep you apprised of my travels and information gathering for the past while (I cannot say how long, time has become irrelevant without your face beside me marking the years) because the deeper I sink into this life that my mother lead, the more removed I become from the world I once knew.

This is not a pretty story of a woman trapped in a tomb, awaiting her daughter and a comet to free her from a living death. This is a story in fragments, half as full of fiction as of fact – if I had not seen the documents and hidden sketchings with my own eyes, I would not believe this to be true. It is far more fantastic than a princess in a tower, far more painful than I could have fathomed.

 

_From what I have gathered, the facts (tied together with my own speculation) are these:_

 

_In the 1300s a man presumed to be a beggar, Zhu Yuanzhang, entered the White Lotus Society – a Buddhist sect that worshiped the mythical "Unborn Venerable Mother"… Yuanzhang was not (I believe) a beggar – but rather, a vampire from the North. In order to gain power, Yuanzhang hid his immortality, but used his knowledge of vampirism to become the driving force behind the secret society._

_This is where it gets fuzzy – I believe, after scouring the annals, that Yuanzhang went in search of a representative of the “Unborn Mother” and, together with his rebellion, kidnapped a young woman from a small village. There are scattered reports that this woman had a family – a husband and two sons – who were killed when she refused to leave them behind. Yuanzhang made her as he was – the undead – and presented her to this obscure sect as a symbol of his power. With her at his side, he defeated the Mongols and eventually founded the Ming dynasty. This woman, I believe – was my Mother._

_There are hints that the secret society stayed in power, only so long as my mother was locked in the palace – an eternal concubine to the Emperor and a Symbol of the Empire’s defeat of death._

_Three hundred years later, the Ming dynasty collapsed and I believe this is the point at which my mother escaped the palace and shortly thereafter found me – possibly the victim of genocide. There are many stories in the Western mountains of a child being born of death and snow on the eve of a great war. I am not narcissistic in my belief that this may be a reference to my own beginnings. Mother was too full of fury at what was done with her – too damaged by centuries of abuse, to keep quite. My own vague memories of our early time together are full of a sense of vengeance and blood that seemed to ebb once we ventured into Europe. Especially after mother became friends with the young Katherine Pierce in the early 1800s._

_There is another story of a warrior woman - Wang Cong'er- who is said to have died after a long rebellion, but I like to think if this woman was not also my mother, then at least she was there. We left for Europe around the same time as Wang’s death – as far as I can figure – and the vendetta (the warrior’s anger over her husband’s death) as well as her described fighting style (a sword in each hand) reminds me so vividly of my mother when I was young… or – at least, before we arrived in Europe and she left behind her rage. I also have had dreams in the past of battles and sieges… I had always believed to have an over-active imagination, but I am beginning to understand that my dreams are fragmented memories from my early years._

_I can’t imagine the pain she suffered at the hands of her maker – locked in a room for hundreds of years, fed only rarely, a living-in-death Symbol of the might of an Empire who can keep a woman as a pet._

_I still do not fully understand why my mother turned me – it is possible I was still very alive when she found me, but I am still unsure on this point. I only remember pain, blinding pain. I have no memories of being human. I now am so grateful for this – that I do not feel the need to mourn for my parents and family, the way my mother has held her murdered husband and children in her heart for all of this time. It fills me with a sadness I cannot fully express to you._

 

I will not be sending letters for a while; the world is too full of fury. Yes, even buried as I am in such an ancient land, I have stayed aware of the changes... I sense a coming change and a period of great unrest. The soothsayers I have befriended have urged me to return to my village far to the East, where I am still spoken of and will be welcome until such time as I can return. I hope your sons do not become involved in this world that is being built and destroyed.

Do not seek me out,

Anna

 

_There is a story of a woman born of pain and grief. A young woman, beautiful to behold, damaged beyond belief – her pain turning her into the undead figure of vengeance._

_They tell of a man from the city, a man with dark eyes and a low hood, a man with delicate skin and long fingers, who traveled the lands in search of Beauty to put on display. Many of the poor villagers on his route brought him with tears in their eyes, their young children – their unmarried daughters – seeking a life beyond struggle for that which they cherish most. Seeking the safety of wealth for their progeny._

_But Beauty is in what is desired, not in what can be thrown away. That which is given willingly, is not as Precious as that which is held close. The man with the thin lips knew this instinctively, he watched the people as they passed him, looking for the Beauty that was cherished and loved beyond all others._

_In a small village beyond the reaches of the Court and the wealth of the man’s purse, there was a young woman who was spoken of as the kindest and gentlest in the land. She was said to shine like a pearl in the deepest ocean. The man seeking Beauty sought her out and fell entranced by her easy nature and disposition._

_Most importantly, the man watched jealously as the woman’s husband gazed upon her with eyes full of devotion and love. Watched as her two young sons followed her to and fro, grasping at her hands and clothing in awe and love. Watched her kiss them with such deep affection. Watched the young family as they floated on their own love for each other – oblivious to his gaze, to his purpose, to the world around them, secure in each other._

_He ripped her from them easily, sliding a sword into the young man’s stomach like butter, his eyes on the woman’s face as her world came shattering down around her ankles. Snapping the necks of her children swiftly and deftly, watching her shining face grow hard and crystalize with pain._

_It is said that in that moment, he laughed and kissed her with glee. This woman, who was so loved and had loved so fully, was stripped from her world in an instant, at the man’s whim. It is said that he took more pleasure in her pain, in creating a creature of darkness from where there was only light, than any from the body of a woman._

_It is said that the soul of this poor creature still haunts these lands – made immortal in her pain; her soul a wreaking avenger – jealous of pure love, a figure haunted by love and made only of hate and death; destroying that which is hateful and defending that which is not. A paradox of jealousy and love, of hate and death – wandering eternally in search of the souls of her lost loves._

                                   

 

 

 

 

                                                 _A Cloud of Hair Gleaming in Spring_

_(Wu Guxiang’s ‘Portrait of a Lady’, Qing Dynasty)_

 

                                                                This painter gave you a cloud of hair

                                                                Set high upon your head;

                                                                A tight silk gown, sleeves broadly loose

                                                                But like a water scallion

                                                                Yellowish green, and fragile

                                                                Your eyes, softly drawn, capture

                                                                A soul suffocating inside.

                                                                You only stare at the jade hairpin in your hand.

                                                                Such pitiful life behind the lovely pose

                                                                Even the sighs are forgotten.

                                                                The naked cries and desires of youth

                                                                Have long been smothered in silk and brocade.

                                                                                Sunlight

                                                                Though radiant in spring

                                                                Cannot pierce this elegant coldness

                                                                Pale ribbons strangling your veins.

                                                                Oh you cold, cold woman

                                                                If you could rip apart this silk

                                                                And leap back into the sea of life

                                                                To recover the lost pulse.

                                                                To love, to hate in the flesh is far far better

                                                                Than this life’s token – a jade hairpin.

Zheng Min

 

 


	10. Epilogue

Beloved Father, Poet, Friend  
1885 – 1958

 

Anna stared down at the gravestone, as still as a statue. She had missed his death, avoided his illness, ignored his funeral, abandoned his gravestone… she had let him die in peace.  _(Though she was haunted by the last words he spoke to her, “You just don’t want to watch me die.” And she knew – how she knew! – that she did not stay from his side for his sake, but for her own.)_  She had let him rest in peace for almost thirty years before braving the sight of it, before examining the site of it with her own eyes.

Beside his rough stone and incomplete words there was a simple engraving _: Devoted Wife and Mother 1892 – 1957_. He had lived barely a year after his wife left him alone.  _(While Anna had stayed as far away as possible, sitting in protest in the South, backpacking through war zones in the East, attending concerts on the West coast… forever moving, moving, moving – avoiding the sight of his face in bookstores, avoiding the memory of him in crowded rooms, forever ignoring the ache in her heart as the one person she had ever loved disappeared from the world with a sigh.)_  She looked down at the cluttered stone, flowers and chocolates and knick-knacks and copies of his books caked his stone like frosting.  _(He had only known love and devotion when she had left.)_  She kicked sullenly at a vase of flowers with her black combat boot, it turned over and a trickle of stale, green water flowed out of it, sinking into the perfectly cut grass.  _(Always the brooding teen, always the morose child kicking things over, always the infant incapable of growing and learning… in all that time, what had she learned? What could she learn?)_

“I’m sorry.”

Her eyes filled with tears and she let them flow down her cheeks.  _(She was sorry for so many things – for leaving, for keeping him, for not coming to his deathbed, for not apologizing sooner, for not loving him the way he wanted her to…)_  She brushed off that last thought with a shrug. She had read the reviews on his book – had snuck into his therapist’s office and read through the files – had listened to his children discuss him, her, their story  _(their fiction)_  … she knew all the words…

**Stunted. Abused. Emotionally scarred. Rape. Abandonment issues. Daddy issues. Oedipal complex. Depression. Neglect.**

She had heard it all; she knew everything the world had to say about them – about her.  _(Nothing is sacred or secret once it is written; nothing is private or pure once you tell the world.)_  She had muddled over the words a time or two, and then passed them off  _(“A complex look at a cycle of parental abuse through the narrative trope of vampirism.”)_  She thought very little of the reviews  _(“Vampires have rarely been used in this fashion, bringing to the forefront a lovely and heartbreaking story of childhood abandonment and abuse through the use of such a prevalent and popular mythic figure.”)_ or the reviewers  _(“This reviewer was really rooting for this couple, hoping until the end that their love story would end in eternity and not with her leaving… it truly shows the amount of emotional duress a young woman can undergo in her first romantic relationship”)_ , ignoring for the most part judgments she had already cast on herself  _(The metaphor of the “vampire” in order to portray an emotionally dead character was a cop-out, in my opinion. The relationship doesn’t work, not because of her so-called abandonment issues, but because she’s a bitch. He quite frankly deserves better.”)_  And never so much as considering any of the alternatives  _(“His obsession with her is quite frightening and an accurate warning to any teen girl before beginning a first relationship”)_.

She crouched down and reached out with both hands, fingering the words on the two gravestones before her.

“Someday, maybe.”

 _Someday I won’t be so afraid. Someday I will be capable of living to the fullness that you did. Someday I will not be haunted by the memory of you and your hand over my mouth, of your frail body wrapped in my arms as I sang you to sleep._   _Someday the nightmares will end. Someday the hazy memories of my own mortality will become as solid as you once were - or will fade away. Someday it will all become clear._

As she walked away into the dusk, preparing for the coming storm, her shoulders pressed into the wind, she avoided the thoughts she couldn’t speak aloud; only secretly hoping that she could finally stop running.  _(Wouldn’t that be a miracle?)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Further notes: Spoilery in nature
> 
>   * All poetry taken from [Women of the Red Plain](http://books.google.com/books/about/Women_of_the_red_plain.html?id=1O4QAAAAYAAJ), an anthology of Contemporary Chinese Women's Poetry
>   * Shen was found by Anna at a [Chinese Railroad Worker Camp](http://bushong.net/dawn/about/college/ids100/workers.shtml) - follow link to more information on the presence of Chinese workers in America at this time (It's probably historically inaccurate that a woman and small child would have been in any rough terrain - but I imagine that there must have been some cases/encampments that were not male-only)
>   * Pearl's story deals primarily with the[ White Lotus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Lotus) - which was a specific Buddhist sect that worshipped the "Unborn or Eternal Venerable Mother" ... which just screamed "vampire" to me
>   * The man who kills Pearl's family: [Hongwu Emporer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongwu) - a beggar who used the White Lotus Society to rise to power
>   * The last story that Anna tells, of [Wang Cong'er](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Cong%27er), is also based on a historical figure who was associated with the White Lotus. She was pretty much a BAMF.
> 



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